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Voting is open now until Nov. 6 for the 2014 Global ICF Board of directors and one of the Metro DC Chapter's own members is on the ballot.

G. Lee Salmon, PCC, a pioneer and longtime leader instrumental in bringing coaching into widespread acceptance by federal agencies, says, "I think voting in the current election for the ICF Global Board of Directors is vital to ensuring that ICF has leaders who can move the organization forward building credibility for the coaching profession. Being part of the global community of coaches is rewarding and ensures that we have the perspective, ideas, and resources necessary to create a positive future.”

Salmon (pictured here) is one of five candidates for the two (2) Director positions on the 2014 ICF Board of Directors. One candidate, Damian Goldvarg, MCC, is being put forward for election as the board’s Chair.

The election website includes links to the criteria for global Directors and Chair as well as detailed information on each nominee to review before you vote.

The International Coach Federation (ICF) has grown in less than 20 years from one man's mission to a global organization with over 20,000 members. As a nonprofit membership organization, it is led by a member-elected Board of Directors who set the vision, mission, objectives, and measures of success. Practically, this is accomplished via an annually revised comprehensive Strategic Plan.

As you reflect on where your practice is going over the next few years, take some time to think about how a strong global organization advocating for ethical standards and minimum qualifications will help set you apart. Review the candidates extensive applications and resumes and find out who shares your vision of a global coaching culture and give the organization your feedback by casting your vote.

Tired of searching Google for something like "creating an organizational culture of coaching" and getting pages and pages of certification programs? There is no shortage of programs and services to help you become a coach, but just try to find help with upsizing a concept that works extremely well one-on-one and incorporating into an organization's culture. It can be frustrating to even the most passionate supporter of coaching.

With its PRISM award, the International Coach Federation rewards the efforts of those individuals working to create an organizational coaching culture. The most recent winner for the Washington, D.C. area is The Defense Acquisition University (DAU), which was honored in June of 2013. Individuals like Richard Hansen, ACC, have unlocked the code to increasing the impact of their individual capabilities by changing the culture. Please note, this tactic is not for the faint of heart; the DAU initiative was launched in FY2008 and has spent five years training and certifying more than 40 internal coaches, as well as training more than 2,800 leaders and supervisors in their Leader as Coach program. A commitment like this requires top-down support, but it’s proving to be worth it for DAU! The DAU has shown improvements in strategic communication, change implementation, stakeholder relationships and leadership/people interactions. In addition, it has seen increased personal and workgroup productivity, customer satisfaction, and organizational efficiency. The DAU estimates its Return on Investment at 330% Non-Financial and 754% Financial.

And DAU is not alone. At a recent ICF Metro DC Chapter joint event with Georgetown's Institute for Transformational Leadership (ITL), panelists from Georgetown, ITL, ICF Metro DC, LYA Associates, Arlington County Government, Booz Allen Hamilton, the UN Secretariat, DAU, Hillel, and DHS's Customs and Border Protection Agency discussed their current programs and future innovations in the area of organizational coaching.

Managing Coaching at Work: Developing, Evaluating, and Sustaining Coaches in Organizations, by Jackie Keddy and Clive Johnson, cites many reasons coaching culture changes can go off the rails, including when "everyday management and responses to changing priorities 'get in the way' of coaching." They find the critical elements to continued growth and success of a program to include active senior leader commitment and support, and continued promotion of the practice, benefits and success stories of coaching within the organization.

If you think about it, these are the exact types of things coaches do best. Coaching isn't about the initial accomplishment, it’s about the transformational practice that allows the individual (or in this case, the organization) to reach the new "normal" and then reach for more.

So then when looking at helping an organization change to a coaching culture, we should start where we would start with an individual client.

Assess the organization's needs and the current climate

Engage the client in a line of questioning that helps them define the expected outcome of the new culture

Explore the barriers in between the current state and the desired state

Inquire about potential partnerships that may be utilized in the change process

Support the client to clearly define the resources needed and develop a plan to secure them

Help the client set goals, timelines, and accountability for reaching them

Continue to help the client reflect on the process, lessons learned, and next steps

Treating the process as a coaching engagement instead of a consulting engagement helps begin the process of changing the culture and allows the leaders to take ownership of the process and the change. The message going down is not, “we need to do this by X date.” Instead, the message becomes a question: “what needs to be accomplished and when can we get it done?”

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Have you worked in or with an organization trying to adopt a coaching culture? What worked really well? What could have been done better?

During my year as ICF president in 2011, I came to truly appreciate that one of the great strengths of our organization is that we have members in over 110 countries around the world. And with the strength of this diversity comes the challenge and responsibility to better understand one another. To meet this challenge, I created new avenues of communicating on a regular basis and hoped that we could someday bring all of our experts in the field together to learn from each other.

So I am really proud of global ICF for organizing a conference on Cultural Competence, Diversity and Inclusion. The conference, formally called ICF ADVANCE Cultural Competency, will be held October 24-26, 2013, at the Hilton Dulles Hotel and has people from 15 countries registered to attend. Click here to get the detail from the global ICF website.

As a part of this conference, ICF also arranged for two, free pre-event webinars. One was held on September 10, 2013, and the second will be held on this coming Thursday, October 10, 2013, at two different times that day. You can listen to the recordings of the September 10 webinars or register for the October 10 webinars. The one I heard on September 10 was terrific. Click here for the webinar information.

And ICF just announced that if you are unable to attend the conference in person, you can attend virtually at a much lower cost.

I’m also very proud of the ICF Metro DC Chapter for accepting the invitation from global ICF to be part of a pilot project on Diversity and Inclusion. The Steering Committee for the project will be co-chaired by Parker Mabry and me. We had our first organizational conference call earlier this week. If anyone is interested in working with us, please let me know at edmodell@aol.com.

Ed Modell, PCC, is past president of the International Coach Federation and of the ICF Metro DC chapter.